Matt Nolan

Bleg: Grimes on bubbles

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Arthur Grimes recently gave an interview to Reuters, all I’ve seen so far is this write up via Raf on Twitter (cheers).  Now Grimes is an incredibly good New Zealand economist, to put things in perspective I would generally put more weight on a single line of his opinion of something than I would on my own intuition and analysis of issues – an given that as individuals we are strongly biased towards our own views that is pretty significant.

But anyone who reads TVHE knows what I’m like, I just really really want to know ‘why’ certain things are being said!  I emailed a few economists and some suggested I do a bleg asking, so why not!

In the Yahoo story there are a couple of segments I’m a touch confused on and I’d like it if someone could answer them for me 🙂 (Note:  Seamus from Offsetting offers some example answers at the bottom of this post)

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Matt Nolan

Was Summers right in saying “pollute the LDCs”?

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Back in 1991, Larry Summers upset a lot of people as Chief Economist at the World Bank.  His memo has been viewed as morally reprehensible, was cited in the second chapter of this book as indicative of the way economists ignore moral values, and was used as a key example in a philosophy class I sat in of the untenable nature of economic arguments.

But, as a description of what would happen if people in LDC’s (least developed countries) had the choice, was he actually correct?

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Matt Nolan

Quote of the day: Pinker on changes in social sciences

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Via Noah Smith.  We have the following post on the Pinker vs Wieseltier debate on science and humanities (if you have a chance I would suggest reading the debates themselves as well).

The era in which an essayist can get away with ex cathedra pronouncements on factual questions in social science is coming to an end.

Very good, and Pinker’s co-operative version of science with the humanities seems appropriate to me (where instead we are merely asking about how to deal with certain propositions and using the best tools available).  I think Pinker won this debate, I am unsure why Wieseltier felt it necessary to take such an extreme position though – I think he initially believed Pinker was trying to force through a view based on the superiority of scientific authority (one that Pinker rules out in his initial article!), when he was really just suggesting the use of the scientific method (namely introducing a degree of the positivist view of theory creation) given the improvements in data availability and usability we have had.

As XKCD says:

But even within Pinker’s reasonable claims there is one area where I would be a touch careful Read more

Matt Nolan

Low productivity isn’t lazy

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Good post on the Productivity Commission blog, Prod Blog.

When it comes to labour productivity, or productivity more generally many people in society assume that an economist saying “productivity is low” is the same as saying “people are lazy”.  But this is far from the case.  Lisa Meehan clears that up for us:

Poor labour productivity doesn’t mean that Kiwi workers are lazy.  Labour productivity measures how much output is produced per hour worked; it doesn’t tell us anything about how hard we’re working.  In fact, as we discuss in our paper, New Zealanders work long hours compared with the OECD average.  The problem is that despite these long hours, NZ has low GDP per capita – that is, the problem stems from poor labour productivity.

…

Put another way, ‘labour productivity’ is a convenient (and useful) metric to think keep tabs on our wider productivity performance.  But, by itself, the catch-all labour productivity measure tells us little about the performance of workers alone.

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Shamubeel Eaqub

LVR speed limits are here

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RBNZ restrictions on high loan to value ratio (LVR) mortgages came into effect on 1 October 2013. They are already biting – with ASB pulling its high LVR approvals. By definition, the new rules will reduce high LVR borrowing growth, but not necessarily total borrowing (because banks are now incentivised to lend ‘traditional’ mortgages). The international evidence on impact on house prices is mixed at best and the RBNZ’s regulatory impact assessment is pretty up front about it.

Where I disagree

The purpose of the new rules is to reduce the amount of risk accumulating in the banking sector. The RBNZ’s aim should not be to reduce credit growth or house price growth per se, rather systemic risk arising from high risk debt that may have implications for financial stability, and in turn, economic stability. But it feels like the RBNZ is really targeting house prices.

The RBNZ should keep the financial stability tools as separate from monetary policy as possible. Focussing on risk in the financial system in a consistent manner would keep monetary policy independent/free of political interference. Politicians will be running interference with this policy – as we have already seen from National, Labour and Greens. This political interference should be a good reason to ask if the RBNZ should be doing both monetary policy and financial stability.

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